


The sparrows

by Petra



Category: Hamilton - Miranda, Iskryne Series - Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette
Genre: Gen, Psychic Wolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-20 23:36:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6029752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander Hamilton meets his brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The sparrows

Alexander spends little time around the wolf cubs' area of the camp, as he has hundreds of other responsibilities to fulfill for General Washington and despite his best efforts, he has no chance at command in the near future. However, when he finds himself faced with a cub that looks too young to bond, leggy and light-furred, he cannot help but make eye contact with it out of some latent hope.

He smells gunpowder and ink, all he ever smells anymore over the funk of soldiers, but with an underlying note of the sea. He has not smelled the sea in so long that he looks around to see if someone has been fishing, if somehow the scent of salt is sweat and not his imagination. Then the wolf cub yips and shoves his narrow head under Alexander's hand, and he understands, belatedly, that he has a brother. The scent that follows the contact is an ocean of ink, enough to drown in, with the heady riot of scents--blooming flowers, rotting trees--of the Nevis jungle, and the inimitable pig, horse, men, and sea that is Manhattan. He knows enough of wolves to know that this latter is his own name to the wolf. There are worse things to be named; he has heard officers complain that they do not truly smell so strongly of horses as their wolves think.

It takes little more than a wave of his hand at the wolf, who will not be moved from contact with him, to explain to His Excellency that he must speak to the wolf corpsmen. "Congratulations," Washington says, and his Virginia touches noses with the cub. She smells of tobacco fields, sweat, and gunpowder, of a sudden.

Alexander puts his hand on the back of a chair, suddenly dizzy with awareness of wolves throughout the camp and the men at their sides. "Excuse me, sir," he says, his normal ability to explain himself fled.

"No apologies are necessary, Hamilton. Go and speak to the corpsmen. Find your place in the packsense. Though I would have thought this fellow was a little young to bond."

"I shall ask them," Alexander says, and makes his way to the cubs' sanctuary.

The lieutenant in charge assures him, "He's more than old enough, just smaller than his littermates. He may never reach full growth, but Ink here has been in good health despite his size. You'll have little to worry about with him, sir."

Alexander hesitates. "Ink is hardly a name I would wish to call him." Not when his own name in the packsense is the same and more so, especially; they may be brothers but they should have some differentiation aloud. Besides, however much Washington's Virginia may smell of her name, he has met more wolves named Freedom than he can count, and he cannot fathom that they smell of it.

"No, my apologies, sir, that's only his cub name. You can give him a proper one. Let me get you the register."

While they wait, Alexander strokes the wolf's soft ears. He does not wish to burden the wolf with a name that hundreds of his kind bear, or with some wistful nonsense like "Victory," another common name. If he is to be a small wolf, drenched in ink, let that be his weapon against his foes as much as claws and teeth. Alexander signs the register and names his brother Catullus, both a pun on his predicted size--if he is little more than a puppy, what of it? Alexander towers over no one and is no less of a man for it--and an acknowledgement that ink's viciousness can outlast the years better than any bullet.


End file.
